Scott had spoken to men who knew the renowned freebooter, and could describe him as hairy and strong like a Highland bull--not tall, but remarkable for the breadth of his shoulders and the length of his arms, so that he could untie his garters without stooping. It was his red hair or complexion, of course, that gave him the well-known byname. He is supposed to have been born early in Charles II.’s reign, a descendant of Ciar Mhor, the “great mouse-coloured man,” whom tradition accused of the murder of those scholars at Glenfruin. He would hardly have been out of his teens when the Revolution gave him an opportunity of apprenticeship to scenes of violence. He may have fought at Killiecrankie. His first recorded exploit was the Hership of Kippen in 1691, when he swooped down into the Lennox to carry off a herd of cows belonging to Lord Livingstone, and while he was about it plundered the village of Kippen, whose inhabitants had presumed to oppose him with such clumsy weapons as they had at hand. The young leader of this raid was no homeless outlaw. He had a farm of his own at Inversnaid on Loch Lomond, the accommodation of which he may now and then have exchanged for what is shown on the lakeside as Rob Roy’s Cave, said to have given shelter to Robert Bruce also in his day. When the country had settled down after the Revolution, Rob is heard of as taking grazing lands in Balquhidder, and as acquiring further property or holdings at Craig Royston, farther down Loch Lomond, where again an arched cavern is called “Rob Roy’s Prison,” and rival “Rob Roy’s Wells” are pointed out in this tourist-haunted vicinity. Now or afterwards he combined the apparently incongruous professions of cattle-robber and blackmailer or captain of a border “Watch.” In 1695 he appears to have fallen into the hands of the Philistines, for there is a record of his being ordered for exile to Flanders; but somehow he must have escaped this sentence, perhaps owing to the protection of the Duke of Montrose. It is of course possible that he may here be confused with some other member of the clan, in which the agname Roy was not uncommon. To this nobleman, his neighbour on Loch Lomond, he for a time attached himself, receiving not only protection but loans of money with which to carry on business as a drover. Another way of telling it is that the duke became practically a partner with his enterprising client. For now, putting his pride into his pocket, Rob took to dealing in cattle at the Lowland markets, a trade, as Scott tells us, not altogether peaceful in its incidents.